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Kyrie was bargaining with fate. She was working, steadily, as if nothing had happened, but behind her smile, her ready quips at the customers, she was bargaining with fate.

She had started from the point of view that if Tom were to walk in, right then, she would only tell him how worried she'd been. She wouldn't make a big deal at all out of it. But since then, as the minutes passed and she heard neither from him nor from Rafiel, she'd started bargaining.

Okay, okay, if Tom walks in right now, she told herself, I'll just smile and tell him how glad I am that he's alive. Aware that she'd actually paused to listen for the sound of the back door opening up, she let out a hiss of frustration at herself. It wasn't sane, and it wasn't rational, but the thing was that she'd been expecting Tom to come in in response to her silent concession. She sighed at her own stupidity, and looked at the wall. Okay, he'd been gone more than two hours. What if he was frozen by the side of the road?

She could call Rafiel. She should call Rafiel. But what if Rafiel hadn't found him, yet? Or worse, what if Rafiel had found him? And he wasn't alive? In that case, the longer she took to find out about it, the better, right?

No. No. She was being stupid. It was unlikely he'd be dead, and if he was ill or severely hypothermic, of course she wanted to know. Needed to know. She set down the latest batch of orders and nudged Conan, who was getting much better at tending tables, but who, despite lots of coffee, looked like death warmed over.

"Take over my tables for a little while, okay?" she asked.

He nodded. His gaze turned to her, said what he could not say in full voice. And it was something that Kyrie simply didn't want to hear. What if he's dead? What if I left him and then the Ancient Ones killed him?

Kyrie shook her head at him, slightly, denying her own misgivings as well as his. And then she stepped behind the counter and reached for the phone on the wall, trying to figure out how she could ask Rafiel questions without either giving away the shifter thing, or alarming Anthony, who was looking at her curiously. She was sure he had decided that she and Tom had had a spat. He was giving her that look of concern and gentle enquiry friends give you when they don't want to stick themselves in the middle of your marital disputes.

She took a deep breath. She could just ask Rafiel how it was going.

The phone rang, so suddenly and loudly that it made her jump. She fumbled for it, almost dropped it, managed to get it to her ear and say, "Hello?"

"Is that how you answer the phone for a business?" Tom's gently teasing voice was such a relief to hear that Kyrie felt her knees go weak, and tears sting behind her eyes.

"Idiot," she said.

"Um . . . that's also not the approved . . ." Tom said. She could see him grin as he spoke. And then, as though realizing he could only push his luck so far, he said, "Look, everything is okay. Sorry to take so long to call back, but we found Old Joe—"

"Old Joe?" Nothing could be further from her mind than the transient alligator shifter. She saw Anthony give her an odd look. Clearly that had also not figured in his speculation.

"Yeah. I'll explain when I get back. Look, it might be easier . . . if you can leave Anthony and Conan in charge and join us in the room at the bed-and-breakfast?" He chuckled softly. "I'd like to add girls to the repertoire of odd visitors I shower with."

"Idiot," she said again, very softly.

"Yes, I am. Conan made it back okay, right?"

"Yeah. Conan is fine. He's getting better at waiting tables, too." Again, Kyrie was conscious of Anthony's baffled look at her. She did her best to brazen it out, as she asked, "So you met Rafiel?" At least she assumed so, unless he had now taken to using the royal we.

"Yeah. He'll be coming back with me. We're going by a doughnut place first, though, apparently."

"What?"

"I don't know," Tom said. Kyrie could hear another voice in the background, that she had to assume was Rafiel talking. "He says they have a tracker in his car, and if he doesn't go by a doughnut place at least once a week they kick him out of the force."

"Ha ha," Kyrie said.

"Yeah, I told him it was lame, too, but at least he's making an effort at making fun of himself. A few more years and he should be human. Hey. Stop hitting me. Police brutality. So, do you think you can make it to the room? In about fifteen minutes?"

"I'll manage," Kyrie said.

"All right. And, listen . . . I'm an idiot. Sorry if I worried you."

She tried to deny that he worried her at all, but her mouth refused to form quite that big a lie. "It's okay," she said, instead, because she had bargained with fate, and she'd promised not to kill him, not to maim him even slightly, and finally that she wasn't even going to yell at him. "It's okay."

 

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Framed